---

title: file-logger keywords:

• APISIX
• API Gateway
• Plugin
• File Logger description: This document contains information about the Apache APISIX file-logger Plugin.

---

Description

The file-logger Plugin is used to push log streams to a specific location.

:::tip

• file-logger plugin can count request and response data for individual routes locally, which is useful for debugging.
• file-logger plugin can get APISIX variables and NGINX variables, while access.log can only use NGINX variables.
• file-logger plugin support hot-loaded so that we can change its configuration at any time with immediate effect.
• file-logger plugin saves every data in JSON format.
• The user can modify the functions executed by the file-logger during the log phase to collect the information they want.

:::

Attributes

Name	Type	Required	Description
path	string	True	Log file path.

Metadata

You can also set the format of the logs by configuring the Plugin metadata. The following configurations are available:

Name	Type	Required	Default	Description
log_format	object	False	{“host”: “$host”, “@timestamp”: “$time_iso8601”, “client_ip”: “$remote_addr”}	Log format declared as key value pairs in JSON format. Values only support strings. APISIX or Nginx variables can be used by prefixing the string with $.

The example below shows how you can configure through the Admin API:

curl http://127.0.0.1:9180/apisix/admin/plugin_metadata/file-logger -H 'X-API-KEY: edd1c9f034335f136f87ad84b625c8f1' -X PUT -d '
{
  "log_format": {
    "host": "$host",
    "@timestamp": "$time_iso8601",
    "client_ip": "$remote_addr"
  }
}'

With this configuration, your logs would be formatted as shown below:

{"host":"localhost","@timestamp":"2020-09-23T19:05:05-04:00","client_ip":"127.0.0.1","route_id":"1"}
{"host":"localhost","@timestamp":"2020-09-23T19:05:05-04:00","client_ip":"127.0.0.1","route_id":"1"}

Enabling the Plugin

The example below shows how you can enable the Plugin on a specific Route:

curl http://127.0.0.1:9180/apisix/admin/routes/1 -H 'X-API-KEY: edd1c9f034335f136f87ad84b625c8f1' -X PUT -d '
{
  "plugins": {
    "file-logger": {
      "path": "logs/file.log"
    }
  },
  "upstream": {
    "type": "roundrobin",
    "nodes": {
      "127.0.0.1:9001": 1
    }
  },
  "uri": "/hello"
}'

Example usage

Now, if you make a request, it will be logged in the path you specified:

curl -i http://127.0.0.1:9080/hello

You will be able to find the file.log file in the configured logs directory.

Disable Plugin

To disable the file-logger Plugin, you can delete the corresponding JSON configuration from the Plugin configuration. APISIX will automatically reload and you do not have to restart for this to take effect.

curl http://127.0.0.1:9180/apisix/admin/routes/1  -H 'X-API-KEY: edd1c9f034335f136f87ad84b625c8f1' -X PUT -d '
{
  "methods": ["GET"],
  "uri": "/hello",
  "plugins": {},
  "upstream": {
    "type": "roundrobin",
    "nodes": {
      "127.0.0.1:9001": 1
    }
  }
}'